1915 by Roger McDonald Page A

body under the sheets and studied her swollen lips as they crackled madly with an electric phrase: “Kiss me.”
    Because the church encased these thoughts in its stone frame the idea of being trapped in his body came back, and he crossed and uncrossed his legs in frustration.
    The cattle and sheep are finding the festive season alittle dry, said Mr Fox, so we must pray for fresh growth. The hot weather — and he unfurled a white handkerchief from the arm of his cassock and dabbed his forehead — is a burden to us all. Mrs Fox left the organ and took her seat in the front row. Her husband retreated from the prow of the pulpit and polished his spectacles on the sleeve of his gown.
    He referred to notes.
    The women, like a field of straw-winged butterflies, fanned their glowing throats rapidly. The men braced their shoulders as if for duty.
    He spoke the text: “When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.”
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    Christmas, purred Mr Fox, is indeed a time of great rejoicing. Today we have sung carols and heard the Christmas story from the word of God Himself. Yet the festival would be without meaning if we failed to look beyond it. The annunciation and the birth, the bearing of gifts to the child, all these are wonderful in themselves, but their full importance lies in the future. Those coming events in the life of Christ, those bursts of light as he grows and the falling shadows on the road to Golgotha — these are the things that complete the meaning of Christmas. Look at Christ the Child in the old paintings. He is beckoning us with his raised hand to look at the life ahead.
    Billy sank as Mr Fox spoke, sliding to a position where only his legs locked on the rung of the pew in front prevented his slipping off altogether. And at the same time Walter was raised up.
    Pews creaked, and Mr Fox beckoned on behalf of a distant truth.
    But suddenly he turned strange and difficult to follow. His spectacles reflected the frosted glare of a window as he steadied his head, and the effect of a brief, isolating blindness caused Walter to lose track, and then to feel mistrustful. The minister paused and lifted his chin as though listening to an instructing, inhuman voice from elsewhere. It was the same manner he adopted sometimes away from the church when you could tell he wasn’t listening at all. Yet here he was asking the congregation to follow him who was following Christ. What if he was just — mad! His tense mouth pursed like a fish’s … Mrs Fox half-rose from her seat as her husband manipulated his jaw, loosening a streak of foam-coloured light at one wet corner.
    We do not store our grain without preparing for the next season — he leaned from the pulpit — we do not, we shall not sit down at our full tables on Wednesday unmindful of the tasks of the morrow. Therefore he proposed to look forward to a time of tribulation when God was inwardly to be called upon and blessed.
    But for most this was Christmas, or near enough — no time to wrestle with the troubles of the future. Wednesday loomed, as far forward as anyone wished to look. Mr Fox pleaded with God from his lonely height while dozens of dinners sat ready in hot kitchens. Heads drooped, the old and careless dozed, the busy fans creaked right and left.
    And now, well beloved father — he quoted from somewhere — what shall I say? I am taken among anguishes. Save me in this hour. Please it thee, Lord to deliver me, for I am poor and what shall I do and whither shall I go without thee.
    A wasp’s nest high on a lamp chain held Walter’sattention for a minute, and the creeping heat that advanced from outside cradled him. Then he heard Mr Fox talking a kind of sense — and he understood. For as we are taken, said the minister, and destroyed, so we shall glimpse the destination.
    Walter clenched one hand in the other and bent his head as if in prayer.
    Mr Fox returned tø the Christmas