Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson Read Free Book Online

‘Saved by Grace Alone’. I had only seen the leaflet, but my mother had all the details. Apart from Pastor Spratt, we had planned a careful campaign for the farming folk of Devon. In the past we had always used the same techniques, whether in a tent or in a town hall, and regardless of the location. Then, our campaigns secretary had received an action kit from Headquarters, explaining that the Second Coming might be at any time, and it was up to us to put all our efforts into saving souls. The action kit, which had been specially designed by the Charismatic Movement Marketing Council, explained that people are different and need a different approach. You had to make salvation relevant to them, to their minds. So, if you visited a sea people, you used sea metaphors to pass on the message. And most important, when talking to individuals, you determined as soon as you could what they most wanted in life, and of what they were most afraid. This made the message immediately relevant. The Council set us training weekends for all those engaged in the Good Fight, and gave out graphs so that we could monitor any improvements, and be encouraged. Pastor Spratt had written a personal recommendation on the backof the kits. There was a photo of him too, much younger, baptising a chief. So, our aim was to prove the Lord relevant to the farming folk of Devon. My mother was in charge of the camp stores, and had already started to buy in huge tins of beans and frankfurter sausages. ‘An army marches on its stomach,’ she told me.
    We were hoping to make enough converts to start a new church in Exeter.
    ‘I remember when we built the gospel hall here,’ said my mother wistfully. ‘All of us pulling together, and we only used born-again workmen.’ It had been a bright, difficult time; saving up for a piano and hymn books; fending off the temptations of the Devil go to on holiday instead.
    ‘Of course, your father was a card player in those days.’
    Eventually they had got a grant from head office to finish the roof, and pay for a flag to fly from the top. It was a proud day when they hoisted the flag, with SEEK YE THE LORD embroidered in red letters. All the churches had flags, made by disabled missionaries. It was a way of helping out their pension and giving them spiritual satisfaction. During the first year my mother had gone into all the pubs and clubs urging the drunkards to join her at church. She used to sit at the piano and sing
Have You Any Room for Jesus?
It was very moving, she said. The men cried into their tankards and stopped playing snooker while she sang. She was plump and pretty and they called her the Jesus Belle.
    ‘Oh, I had my offers,’ she confided, ‘and they weren’t all Godly.’ Whatever they were, the church grew, and many a man will stop in the street when my mother goes past and raise his hat to the Jesus Belle.
    Sometimes I think she married in haste. After her awful time with Pierre she wanted no more upsets. When I sat by her looking through the photograph album at ancestors with stern faces, she always stopped at the two pages called ‘Old Flames’ in the index. Pierre was there, and others including my father. ‘Why didn’t you marry that one, or that one?’ I asked, curious.
    ‘They were all wayward men,’ she sighed. ‘I had a bad time enough finding one that was only a gambler.’
    ‘Why isn’t he a gambler now?’ I wanted to know, trying to imagine my meek father looking like the men I’d seen on films.
    ‘He married me and he found the Lord.’ Then she sighed and told me the story of each one of the Old Flames; Mad Percy, who drove an open-topped car and asked her to live with him in Brighton; Eddy with the tortoiseshell glasses who kept bees . . . right at the bottom of the page was a yellowy picture of a pretty woman holding a cat.
    ‘Who’s that?’ I pointed.
    ‘That? Oh just Eddy’s sister, I don’t know why I put it there,’ and she turned the page. Next time we