Out of the Bible
St Mary's Bourne Street was Fr Gresham's church in his retirement. I didn't go there on Sunday's, but I sometimes drove Fr Gresham there to attend 'Holy Days of Obligation' services that fell during the week. On one such occasion we had gone on afterwards, in the company some other parishioners, to the nearby pub, where we all settled around a table.
It happened that there was a new young woman behind the bar. As regulars, the men in our group - there were only men on this occasion - noticed her and remarked how attractive she was. It wasn't done in an improper way, but it was a group of blokes saying the barmaid was pretty. I didn't know if Fr Gresham would join in. He did. He said she had beautiful eyes. Which seemed ok to me.
But all these years later (2024) a penny has dropped upon hearing again the reading of David being chosen, out of all his brothers, to be anointed king. (1 Sam 16:12) He is described as having beautiful eyes. I would place a bet that this was the source of Fr Gresham's comment. He read his Bible, and details from it, especially from the Old Testament, sometimes cropped up in his talk. They weren't heralded, and they slipped by: they seemed to be part of the framework of his mind.
Fr Gresham didn't used to ask you questions. He didn't criticise you. His talk was general, or he told you something about his own experience. He left you pretty free. The single mild admonishment, in words, anyway, that I can recall is when he told me, during a conversation, "You don't read your bible!"
Terry was turning his attention to me so as to discover what I was going on about, when Fr Gresham, who was just ahead of us, crashed in with “La la la la …” or “Hey ho, hey ho …” or some other quite loud vocalisation that stopped me talking.
I saw Terry look at Fr Gresham, and read the situation. Nothing more was said. We went on with our errand. Fr Gresham could be tough.
He once said that Archbishop Michael Ramsey, though some might have thought him shambling, actually "knew how to cut through nonsense".
Evidence of prayer?
He replied, "Innocent in every way." He was correcting me, but he spoke gently, almost wearily, as if his response had come out of prayers said for Mary over long years. She had been a teacher at St Paul's primary school, and had gone on to be a head-teacher in another school. But she always remained a parishioner at Fr Gresham's church: she had attended St Paul's Bow Common for decades. She died in 2023, and was a great person.
Striking phrases
Occasionally a humourous and apt phrase would occur to Fr Gresham. I can remember two examples. Both from the early 1990’s.
In the first, preparations were going on for the church Christmas bazaar. Fr Gresham, in an attempt to find something, was putting his hand into one pocket after another and bringing out only coins and notes. “That’s the trouble at this time of year," he said, "with the raffle going on for the bazaar, people keep giving you money. One becomes lousy with money. One becomes lousy with money,” he repeated with a laugh.
The second example occurred when I asked him what he thought of Pope John Paul II, and I added that “He is a great person, isn’t he?”
“Well,” replied Fr Gresham, not quite agreeing. He said a few words about the Pope wanting to control things too tightly from the top, which he didn't agree with. He admitted he was good in other ways. Then he continued, "I would say he’s a curate’s egg of a Pope, good in parts. Yes, he’s a curate’s egg of a Pope,” he repeated, finding funny the use of curate and Pope together.
Being stoic
I visited Fr Gresham during a hospital stay towards the end of his life. The overworked nurses were doing their best to give out the meals. All that was left for him was a baked potato, and it lay before him, on a plate, not cut open, no butter, nothing with it.
In the next bed an elderly patient was refusing his meal, protesting loudly that he had ordered the fish and must have the fish. He sent the harassed young nurse away to find him that menu option. I saw Fr Gresham cast a look his way but say nothing. Then he cut into the potato, only remarking, "Well, dull enough!" before beginning to eat.
The fish shop and the dress shop
When I was a lodger at the vicarage I told Fr Gresham about a recent visit to Manchester where one of my friends was now a fishmonger with his own shop. The shop was busy and could have done with his wife's help, but she, having experience in fashion, had gone her own way and opened a dress shop.
I was relating this when I was stopped in my tracks by Fr Gresham's expression. I didn't recognise him for a moment. He had a wide and rather toothless grin on his face. He said, "I can just see it; a fish shop, and a dress shop."
Apposite Response
Over the evening meal in the vicarage I was complaining to Fr Gresham about the poor care I had seen that day as an agency nurse. I told him how a staff member had made up some lemon squash for the patients, but she had poured in too much squash, so there wasn’t room for the water needed to dilute it properly. So when it was given out, after a sip or two, it was being left. It was a dementia ward. The patients knew they didn't like it, but weren't able to explain what was wrong. They were vulnerable.
So I collected a few of these drinks, tipped out some of the contents, diluted the remainder with water, and returned them. The patients took another taste,
and went on to finish the drinks.
Fr Gresham replied, “Yes, it was both careless and wasteful.”
It occurred to me at the time that Fr Gresham's response was empathetic and comprehensive. The two adjectives used described separate aspects of the incident. I liked the sentence structure, and afterwards adopted it sometimes.
Chatting after a service
The congregation was not large at St Paul’s, but it was a community. Almost everyone stayed for a cup of tea or coffee after Sunday mass. Fr Gresham was one of the congregation at these gatherings. There was no sense of him being the big chief. He was egalitarian.
The talk was about Selina Scott, a well-known television presenter at the time. I don’t remember why her name came up. But in due course someone said, “Father doesn’t even know who she is, anyway.”
Fr Gresham responded seriously to this charge. “Yes I do,” he said.
“Who is she, then, Father?” asked more than one amused voice.
“She’s a prostitute,” ventured Fr Gresham, to a mildly shocked audience.
One of the women, stout and working class, spoke up in an emphatic and rather moral tone. "Oh no, Father, she's on television.
A Tragic Accident
He found the leaders there rather authoritarian and elitist. They compared unfavourably with the abbot at Mirfield who was unassuming and gracious. At a weekly social tea he would stop at tables for a word or two with guests and community members.
At this retreat they were shepherded off to bed early in order to be up early for worship the next morning. This did not suit Fr Gresham who refused to go to bed, telling them he was not in the habit of going to bed so early, but that he would be up in time for worship nevertheless.
Somehow Fr Gresham left the retreat before the young man. Perhaps he lost patience with the place. But he intended to catch up with his parishioner back in Bow Common. But tragedy struck before this came about, because the following Wednesday the young man was killed in a caving accident.
I had a perception of grief in Fr Gresham as he related this, although he spoke in a low key way, without any show of emotion. I also had the idea it affected him. Perhaps after this he used extra patience with the young, to the benefit of myself and others.
Fr Gresham did tell me about the retreat, and that the young man died in a caving accident before he saw him again. But about the perception of grief and the idea this influenced him, I could have been wrong.
According to a biography, Pope Francis had an experience that influenced his subsequent ministry. He was a relatively young leader of his Jesuit order in Argentina. Two priests who were working amongst the poor were adopting the new and, then, suspect ideas of liberation theology. Francis decided to recall them but they refused to obey, so he took some measure that had the effect of removing the protection of the religious order from them. This allowed the Argentinian government to arrest, imprison and torture them.
There was a scandal and Francis was sent out to some remote small town placement, where he spent afternoons praying before an icon of "Mary, Un-tier of Knots". In time a friend became Archbishop of Buenos Aires and called him to become one of his suffragans. Francis asked for the slum area where the two priests had ministered, and devoted himself to the poor there.
A Christmas Day vision
I stayed at the vicarage as a lodger over Christmas one year. After mass I accompanied Gresham to an east London pub where we each had four or five pints.
Then we caught the bus back. Fr Gresham sat just behind the driver on a bench seat that faced sideways. (I think it was Christmas day, unless it was another day around then.) I didn't want to sit there for some reason. I went further down the bus to a forward-facing seat.
On the rocking and swaying journey through the fairly empty streets I happened to look up to see Fr Gresham. There was no crown on his head, nor robes upon him, but somehow I seemed to see those, as he sat there, benevolent, inebriated a little, nodding slightly, enjoying the ride home.
Domestic Miracle
This occurred in Fr Gresham's Islington Church almshouse. There were one or two other visitors in the room besides myself. He had been unwell and was sitting in a fairly upright armchair. He said, "You see, it moved! There are miracles still! It was over here before. Now it is over there. Miracles still happen, you see."
I have recreated this speech to try and give an impression of the moment. We visitors looked at the rug Gresham was talking about. We didn't say much. We laughed. Fr Gresham seemed alight with fun and joy. The gist of the incident was that the rug had been under his feet, and now was further away from his chair. This was not too long before his death.
Some Books
One Sunday in the church hall after mass, where we gathered for coffee, l happened to be near Fr Gresham as he picked up a paperback that had been left on a table. He began to examine it in a mildly interested way. Perhaps I knew something about the book, I can't remember; anyway I made some comment about it to Fr Gresham, who I don't think had been aware of me until I spoke.
It seemed the book turned to a hot coal in his hands. It almost bobbled up and down as he hastily disowned it, saying something like, "Whose is it? It's not mine." So there was no exchange of chat about the book. The moment passed and no-one died, as the saying goes. It did not seem to affect anything.
What was the significance of this? Well, at that time I was fairly new at the church, a person Fr Gresham didn't know, more or less. Perhaps he considered a stray novel the wrong ground on which to interact with me? I never saw him read a novel during my time as a lodger or parishioner at his church.
In retirement, he did read some novels, as if he wanted to look into current literature, as well as non-fiction books. He read the notorious 'Satanic Verses' to judge it for himself: likewise, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, popular at the time. Both these books he thought were bad in several ways. I cannot remember how. Of one book, I forget the title now, he said it took his mind some hours to get over the ill-effects he felt from reading it late into the night.
He was given a Susan Howatch book. He said it was full of characters destroying themselves through immoral lives, and if that was a picture of society, then society was in a bad way. He also read 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time' and 'Life of Pi'. He thought they were ok. He did enjoy a new Bill Bryson book that explained science to the general reader, entitled 'A Short History of Nearly Everything'.
Supporting Them
I recall Fr Gresham taking a postcard that had arrived "care of" the vicarage over to the Alcoholics Anonymous group meeting in the hall one weekday evening. It was for one of the people there. They were the only outside group to use the church hall at the time I was a vicarage lodger.
The hall was used weekly for sales of clothes and 'charity-shop' goods. This also provided an outreach, as Fr Gresham said. This sale has since continued under the care of the same faithful parishioners.
Ending mass with a blessing
Fr Gresham sent the congregation away at the end of mass without a blessing. He explained once that you have already received the greater blessing of the consecrated host and wine.
Brother Donald, one of the Anglican Franciscans in the Plaistow friary, east London, also followed this practice at the Friday lunchtime masses that I used to attend in later years.
On the wine used at mass
For mass Gresham used red wine from a 'wine box', the common type you buy that holds about three bottles and has a little plastic tap you press to dispense the contents.
I was used to the sweeter sherry-type wine normally used in the Eucharist, so I questioned him about this once in the sacristy after a service. His reply was simply to quote from memory the statute defining the type of wine suitable for use at mass. It seemed a technical stream of words delivered in a semi-formal way that I hardly was able to follow. But I surmised that ordinary red wine met the criteria for use at mass. So the brief interchange ended.
Do You Need Some Money?
After finishing some errands in central London I was early for calling on Fr Gresham so I went into a pub. It was in the Chancery Lane area after the lunchtime rush. I got a Coke and sat down with my book.
A man interrupted me. He stood before me with a notebook and biro at the ready. He was slim and wore a white shirt, no tie, and dark trousers. He looked to be in his forties, with a weathered face. I didn't study his character there. Perhaps a barrier, that I didn't attend to, lay there.
I forget exactly the wording of the scam now. I think he said they only had £20 notes behind the bar and could I possibly provide any of smaller denomination in exchange for these. I was younger then, but not that young. I was on auto-assist or something. I was flattered to be asked for assistance by the management?
I watched him as he went across the large fairly empty lounge to the bar with about forty of my pounds in five and ten pound notes. I continued to watch him as he talked to the bar man. I didn't look down at my book. I saw him aware of me. He came back across the room to me.
He said he had to go upstairs to see the manageress. I forget the reason for this now. He went out of the door at the left corner of bar-room. I waited, not too long, then followed. He was gone. The bar man, when asked, didn't know anything. He was just a customer.
Later, at Fr Gresham's, I told him what had happened. It was characteristic of Fr Gresham not to give you much visual or aural feedback whilst you told him something. You kind of felt he wasn't listening, but he always was.
As soon as it became clear what I was saying he asked me if I needed some money? He might have put his hand in his pocket, but I couldn't swear to that. I was shocked, in a way, and hastily said no. Nothing more was said. Nor was the incident referred to again.
Here may be an apposite place to note that Fr Gresham rarely asked you questions. He didn't ask you about your life. If you told him something, well and good. But he didn't enquire further, unless such a response was obviously called for. This left you, as a younger person, free.
Some incidental remarks by Fr Gresham
David should beat Goliath
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