The nearest church to our estate is Saint Michael. It is popularly known in the prefabs as Saint Michael Is No Angel. Biblically speaking Saint Michael was not just any old angel by a 'top dog' archangel whose job was to stand up for the people of Israel. (Not too effectively if the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties are anything to go by).
The Sunday School organized at Saint Michael has been a great success, and this is largely the result of two magical ingredients: (1) Sunday School meetings never last very long. (2) They always end with an unexpected treat. The hallowed tradition is to draw Sunday School to a close
with the solemn and much appreciated ceremony of the peace-loving vicar's assistant handing out cigarette cards displaying (for the girls) glamorous Hollywood movie stars standing on top of
tanks and fighter planes and other gruesome instruments of war, and (for the boys) cigarette cards which simply display tanks and fighter planes and other gruesome instruments of war. ("Any means necessary to win over young Christian soldiers!" are the vicar's assistant's cheery words.)
A Sunday morning dawned when Reg Downhill was coaxed out of his marathon-long Sunday morning lie-ins in water-bottle andblanket-swaddled prefab number nineteen by rumours of the
generous cigarette card largesse bestowed y the vicar's assistant. From then on he never looked back. After being confirmed into the Church of England there was even talk of the formerly moody/sulk-prone/and teddy boy-inclined Reg being offered a place on the coveted front row pew!
Older residents of Twiverton still recall the time when the coveted front row pew never went unoccupied. Originally reserved for the higher ranks of the gentry the coveted front road pew was fatally undermined by the lethal pincer movement of this once glittering social formation's demise and the rise of mass society in the shape of a burgeoning council house building programme. Within the space of ten years what the Saint Michael Is No Angel Parish News called "this tranquil, well-turned out and Evelyn Waugh-like parish" had been utterly transformed. The coveted front row pew was all but emptied of its traditional sitters and served as an enduring reproach to the less illustrious present. Although Reg Downhill eventually went (there is no other way of putting this) downhill and succumbed to the spiritual charms of cider drinking in Englishcombe village people still recall the time when the same Reg had come within a hair's breadth of being offered a place on the coveted front row pew.
Stroll through the tranquil grounds of this part Saxon/part Norman/part D-I-Y ancient church and you come across two finely sculptured baroque-styled tombs. While the biting west wind has eroded the majority of its engravings and inscriptions, there is one which stubbornly refuses to disappear. It has become the lodestar that guides residents of Twiverton's two prefab estates through the travails of life.
"Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents and innocent as doves." (Matthew 10:16).
Bouquets of flowers are no longer left strewn on the church yard's two baroque-styled tombs. At most you will see the occasional sighting of a solitary rose or daffodil. Follow the twists and turns of the churchyard's winding path at dusk and you might see the phantom-form of the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. He sits on the grass and re-reads the 'Ever Again' poem he wrote so long ago. It has become a great favourite in Twiverton, and its heart-chiselled words - "landscape of love", "we set forth, two together", "Among flowers. Facing the sky" - seem to whisper their way through the trees.