Theodora's Diary Read online

  Also by Penny Culliford

  Theodora’s Wedding

  Theodora’s Baby

  This novel is a work of fiction.

  The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it

  are the work of the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, events or localities,

  is entirely coincidental.

  ZONDERVAN

  Theodora’s Diary

  Copyright © 2001 Penny Culliford

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

  ePub Edition June 2009 ISBN: 0-310-86432-1

  First published in Great Britain in 2001 by HarperCollinsPublishers

  This edition published in 2004 by Zondervan.

  Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®,, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.

  Penny Culliford asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 0 00 711001 4

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This book is dedicated to

  Terry Simpson

  1942–1999

  He laughed at my jokes.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  June

  July

  August

  September

  October

  November

  December

  January

  February

  March

  April

  May

  June

  July

  About The Publisher

  Share Your Thoughts

  June

  Monday 29 June

  Chickenpox! How can a grown woman, who spends her whole life avoiding children, have contracted chickenpox? It must have been one of that hideous brood of Hubbles. They always look as if they’re harbouring some disease or other. Anyway, the doctor says it will mean at least four weeks off work, two of them in isolation, so it does have its benefits.

  Tuesday 30 June

  This chickenpox is a blessing in disguise. I am determined to use the time to grow spiritually by reading all the latest Christian books, listening to proper Christian music (not just Cliff Richard) and by keeping a journal. It will be a record of events at St Norbert’s and will document my journey through the year. I know it’s a bit unusual to start a diary at the end of June, but I’ve never been one to pander to convention. I’ll try it for a couple of weeks—I don’t think I’ve ever stuck to anything for longer than that. Then I can look back at how I’ve rocketed spiritually upwards in this time of enforced solitude.

  St Norbert’s is a funny sort of church. Perched on top of the hill, squinting down at the village like a benign, geriatric vulture, its solid grey bulk veers more towards cuddly than sinister. It’s not quite Norman (more Nigel, really), not quite Victorian, and definitely not quite modern. I’ve been going there for as long as I can remember. I sometimes think it’s easier than finding anything else to do on a Sunday morning. Practically everyone else I know goes there too. I suppose our outlook is basically evangelical, as long as it doesn’t involve actually talking to anyone. Our major concessions to the twenty-first century are the overhead projector and the tea urn.

  St Norbert’s itself would probably be all right, but for the fact that it seems to attract the strangest people—an assorted assemblage of 70 or so, as diverse in age and temperament as it is possible to get. Kevin, who hardly ever sets foot in the place, says that it’s no stranger than any other collection of deranged cranks, psychopaths and simpletons. That’s rich, coming from a man who thinks nothing of spending the entire weekend at a draughty football ground watching 22 grown men kick a ball up and down a field. Sometimes I wonder why I go out with him. I think he must be spiritually degenerate!

  Ariadne persuaded me to keep this diary. She said it would stop me sitting here feeling sorry for myself and worrying about things like why there’s only one Monopolies Commission, how the person who wrote the first dictionary knew how to spell the words, and who owns the copyright to the copyright symbol. ‘That, and scratching your spots, then phoning up to whinge at me,’ she said.

  Honestly—sisters! Does she think I’m completely neurotic? No, this journal is going to be a record of dynamic living and a fascinating insight into the mind of a modern Christian woman. I would list as my major influences the Acts of the Apostles, the diaries of Samuel Pepys and Adrian Plass’s Sacred Diary; probably in reverse order.

  July

  Wednesday 1 July

  Kevin was rather short with me last night, when I rang him in the middle of the televised match to ask him to call into the Christian bookshop for some spiritually uplifting material for me. I must still have been in bed when he called round this morning, because I found a package on the doormat with a scribbled note:

  Theo,

  Sorry I didn’t have time to call into the bookshop. Hope these will do.

  Love Kev.

  Inside the package were a 1982–1983 Goal of the Month video and a book entitled Astro-Turf—A Guide to Players and their Star Signs. The latter lists the zodiac signs of all the premier league footballers. I really think he is spiritually degenerate. Still, his heart’s in the right place.

  Friday 3 July

  I read two famous and very elderly books today—The Screwtape Letters and The Cross and the Switchblade. Some would describe them as classics, but I think it just goes to show that it’s been a very long time since I last bought a Christian book.

  Out of desperation, I also listened to a cassette I found right at the back of a drawer. I must have bought it at the Greenbelt Festival over 10 years ago, when I first met Kevin. It was by a Christian heavy-metal band called The Ungrateful Lepers. Kevin and I had gone to hear them in a damp field after a veggie burger and two cans of Albatross cider. It was during the song ‘Send Down the Plague’ that we had our first kiss. Now I remember why I haven’t played it for 10 years.

  My spots itch. Mustn’t scratch.

  Saturday 4 July

  Kevin came to visit today. It was all rather unsatisfactory, as he was petrified of catching chickenpox and wasn’t in full command of his faculties because he’s still coping with his grief over his team’s relegation at the end of last season. He insisted that I should prop open the letterbox and sit on the opposite side of the hall before he would talk to me.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he bellowed across my flat from a distance of about 30 feet.

  ‘Terrible!’ I yelled back.

  ‘Me too!’ he screamed.

  ‘Why? You haven’t caught it, have you?’ I shouted.

  ‘No, haven’t you heard the news? We’re selling the goalkeeper … and he was our best scoring player!’

  Sunday 5 July

  I couldn’t go to church today, but someone dropped a copy of St Norbert’s newsletter, The Church Organ, through my door. My eye was drawn to one of the notic
es:

  The first notice is an apology relating to an item which appeared in last week’s newsletter. The item announced simply as ‘Reverend Graves—slides in hall’ was in fact referring to the vicar’s photographic slides. The PCC apologizes sincerely to those disappointed members of the congregation who turned up hoping to see the shoeless vicar run very fast and slither from one end of the hall to the other.

  Monday 6 July

  Well, that’s it. I’ve read every Christian book and nearly every other book I own—except, of course, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, which everyone has on their bookshelf but no one has ever read. Ariadne suggested I tried reading the Bible for once. I think she was being facetious. I’ve watched Kevin’s football video forwards and backwards (backwards was vastly more entertaining) and am currently reading a women’s magazine from 1972 that I found in the airing cupboard. Aesthetically challenged as I am, I find it hard to believe that people ever really made crocheted toilet-roll covers ‘in co-ordinated shades of lilac, tangerine and lime’.

  A ‘get well soon’ card arrived through the letterbox at lunchtime. It was from Jeremiah Wedgwood, whose purpose in life seems to be boring or frightening sick people better. It read:

  To comfort you in your time of infirmity and affliction.

  How nice, I thought, until I read the Bible verse he’d included:

  My body is clothed with worms and scabs, my skin is broken and festering.

  (Job 7:5)

  Please God, don’t let him visit me.

  Things are getting so bad, I may have to resort to watching one of those daytime DIY shows which tell you how to ‘update’ a perfectly acceptable wardrobe using zebrastriped paint effects with a ‘fashionably kitsch’ neon pink silk lining.

  Tuesday 7 July

  Much to my disappointment, there were no daytime DIY shows on. My wardrobe remains untransformed. Instead, I watched with horrified fascination the American interview show where people with deep-seated emotional and relationship problems come to a television studio to hurl abuse (and occasionally chairs) at each other in front of millions of viewers.

  I wonder why they do it?

  After several hours of ‘entertainment’, including repeats of American detective shows from the 1970s and cookery programmes for incompetent or unwilling chefs, I have come to the conclusion that daytime television is a government conspiracy to deter malingerers. If you can endure daytime television, you must be really ill.

  Wednesday 8 July

  Every inch of my skin itches, I look like the one who got turned down for a part in 101 Dalmatians for being too spotty, I want to strangle Cliff Richard, and if I spend another day alone I shall start talking to the fridge.

  Thursday 9 July

  Just as I was asking the fridge what it thought I should have for lunch, the buzzer on my entry phone sounded.

  ‘What do you consider to be the purpose of life?’ enquired an earnest-sounding voice. I pressed the entry button and soon two smartly dressed young men carrying briefcases and magazines appeared at the door of my flat. They eyed my spots apprehensively.

  Three hours later, after giving them the benefit of my opinion on the purpose of life, heaven and who would get there, blood transfusions and the meaning of the Book of Revelation, the two young Jehovah’s Witnesses finally persuaded me to let them leave.

  Friday 10 July

  I got a phone call this morning from Charity Hubble, the chintz-upholstered curate’s wife. I was so desperate to communicate with another member of the human race that even Charity seemed bearable. She reminds me of a well-manured cottage garden—covered in flowers and extremely fertile.

  ‘Hello, Theodora. How are you feeling?’

  Even though I couldn’t see her, I just knew she was smiling in that seraphic, ‘I’m just brimming over with joy’ way I find so utterly nauseating.

  ‘Oh, I’m just fine thank you, Charity,’ I lied.

  ‘How are the spots?’ she enquired.

  ‘A bit itchy, but they’re getting better,’ I fibbed.

  ‘Look, Theodora, I hope you don’t mind, but I wonder if we could come and visit you. I’ve had chickenpox already, but none of the children have. If we came round today and they caught it from you, they would all get it over and done with in the school holidays.’

  My stomach lurched. All eight Hubble children in my flat! Like a priest in a department store who has accidentally wandered into the ladies’ lingerie department, I frantically searched for a way out. I found none.

  ‘Yes, that would be fine,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘About four o’clock?’

  The visit of the Hubble tribe, though lasting less than an hour, was simply too hideous to record. Suffice it to say that I lost my temper with six-year-old Bathsheba, who spent half an hour following me around with a felt-tip pen in her hand, eyeing me in anticipation. I tried to dodge into the bedroom, but she followed me in there. I nipped smartly into the bathroom and whipped the door shut, but when I turned round, there she was, standing by the washbasin. I started to wonder if she was some sort of apparition.

  ‘Why are you following me?’

  Two blue eyes stared out from a puffy gerbil face. She said nothing, but studied my face and bare legs. The felt-tip pen in her hand twitched slightly. I unlocked the door and flung it open.

  ‘Go away,’ I snapped. ‘Leave me alone.’

  ‘But I only wanted to play join-the-dots!’ she wailed, and ran to find her mother.

  Saturday 11 July

  The visitor I was looking forward to about as much as a turkey looks forward to Christmas arrived this afternoon. Jeremiah Wedgwood strode into my flat wearing an expression which made me think of a vulture watching a creature about to take its last breath. ‘Greetings in the name of the Lord! When I noticed you hadn’t been to church, I feared you had backslidden. Then, to my great relief and joy, I heard you were ill. How is your poor, tortured body today?’ he enquired in a voice that sounded like a very bad impersonation of a Conservative politician.

  ‘Oh, er … not too bad, thank you, Jeremiah. Still a bit … spotty.’

  ‘Visiting the sick is my “ministry”, you know.’

  I nodded vigorously, trying to humour him.

  ‘Bringing succour to the afflicted and relief to those in tribulation! You look very pale. Are you sure it’s only chickenpox?’ He peered at me with watery, blue eyes.

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s what the doctor said.’ My mouth started to feel dry.

  ‘Doctor? You’ve had the doctor in?’ He shook his head and tutted. ‘You want to be careful of doctors, you know. It was a doctor who told my Uncle Sid it was only chickenpox. She prescribed him calamine lotion, but—’ and he glanced behind him, lowering his voice to a chilling whisper, ‘—dead within a week’.

  ‘Really!’ I ran a finger around the inside of my collar, which had suddenly become two sizes too small.

  ‘Yes, he was on his way to the chemist to collect his prescription when he got run over by a bus.’

  I could feel the perspiration beginning to break out on my forehead. How long was I going to be able to endure Jeremiah’s ‘ministry’?

  ‘I don’t feel too good. Perhaps I’d better not keep you.’ I tried to sound as if I was suffering bravely, which of course I was.

  ‘Nonsense, I’ve got all afternoon. I always allocate the whole of Wednesday and Saturday afternoons for my ministry of visitation.’ Jeremiah’s immediate departure was clearly not going to be that easy to secure. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘I haven’t given you your present yet.’

  ‘Present! Oh, that’s extremely kind of you. You really shouldn’t have bothered.’

  He rummaged around in his holdall and, to my astonishment, pulled out a five-pound bag of King Edward potatoes. My mind searched frantically for a suitable response.

  ‘M-m-most people would have brought grapes,’ I stammered eventually.

  ‘No, no, no. Potatoes are much better for you. Vitamin C and loads of rou
ghage. You look as if you need more roughage. How are your—’

  I leapt in before he could quiz me on the workings of my digestive system and thanked him profusely for his generous gift. It was clear by now that he was here for the duration and little short of an atomic bomb would deflect him from his intention to ‘minister’ to me. Desperately, I tried to engage him in conversation. If I kept him talking, he couldn’t lay hands on me.

  ‘So how did you come to this ministry, Jeremiah?’

  That was the wrong question. Apart from intestines, his ministry was his favourite subject. His already watery eyes welled up, threatening to burst their banks.

  I made mental arrangements for my funeral.

  I was sure I wasn’t going to make it through this visit alive. Even if I survived the boredom, I feared I might drown in his tears.

  ‘Oh yes! I’ve been doing it ever since I had The Dream.’ I didn’t ask.

  ‘You’d be amazed how many people can barely stagger from their bed of pain when I arrive, but by the time I leave, they’re changed and restored. I’ve witnessed people who start off looking pale and drawn, becoming flushed with health and positively leaping across the room to see me out by the end of my visit, sometimes after only three or four hours. It’s little short of miraculous, truly it is. It’s so precious to be able to bless people in this way.’

  He withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped at the deluge.

  ‘D’you know, there was one poor soul I used to visit—a Mr Barrymore, who drove a really splendid little red sports car. He lived right at the top of the steep hill in the village. Anyway, he became unwell and I used to walk up that hill to visit him every Wednesday. I would pray for him, then we would talk about his garden and his car. He really loved that car. He used to polish it every day until it shone, even when he got really poorly and couldn’t drive it any more. One day something truly wondrous happened. God worked mightily in that situation. It was nothing short of a miracle.’

  I was stunned. Maybe I had misjudged him. ‘You mean he was healed and got better?’