Mr Wentworth

This is a true story from my boyhood in Longridge. 

My father passed his sense of humour on to all his four children, for which I am very grateful. Sometimes on reading the paper he’d say something like: ‘I see Mr Sackforth’s up and died. He was 89. Well, he’d had a good innings. Time he died.’ My eldest sister, Hilda would remonstrate, but with a smile, ‘Oh Dad, you shouldn’t say such things,’ while the rest of us grinned. That was alright, I thought with the wisdom of a nine year old. I mean, 89 years of age, that’s nearly a score over our allotted time span according to the Bible. But then Simon Wentworth, who had just had his second birthday, died; that was at the beginning of the time span and none of us smiled.

It was the first time I’d come so close to death and our street was quieter for a few days. Bernard, his older brother, one of the boys we played with, seemed to have accepted it. Living with the illness of his younger brother over the past weeks must have prepared him, I guess. I met his father only once, but I’ll never forget him. A quietly spoken man, he lived with his wife and two sons just around the corner at the top of our street.

There was talk of the funeral, mostly by the Catholics; we were surrounded by them but there was none of the open animosity between Protestants and Catholics that bristled in some places those days. Mrs Wentworth was firm in her Catholic beliefs and Bernard went to church with his mother as regular as you like. He treated church-going more as a duty he owed his mother, which I thought was nice of him. I never thought about what God or the priest might have thought. You don’t when you’re young, do you?

I was with the small group of children who Bernard invited to go and see Simon’s body to say goodbye. I didn’t have much time to think about whether I wanted to see a dead body lying in a coffin and was with the group that knocked on their door at 3 p.m. that day. A tall dignified man with a touch of sadness in his face opened the door. ‘Bernard said we could come and see Simon. Is that alright Mr Wentworth?’ one of our group asked. He looked at each of us in turn, then nodded his head and invited us in.

When the door was closed and we were quiet he spoke to us; as I remember he said something like: ’I’m pleased you’ve come. You know, Simon has been unwell for some weeks. The doctors told us there was nothing they could do to make him better. He was a bright little chap, and we shall miss hm.’ Then he turned and led the way. I remember the sound our clogs made as we all trooped up the wooden stairs, entered the room and stood around both sides of the bed where the small white coffin lay. Then I saw that Bernard had joined us.

After a few moments someone said: ‘Has he gone to heaven, Mr Wentworth?’ He was silent and I sensed he was thinking of how to answer such a question. Then he looked at us, raised an eyebrow and said: ‘I think so. Yes, I think so’. Nobody knew what to say next or was too shy to say anything. Then his voice was saying: ‘If you’d like, you could kneel and say a little prayer of your own now’. And kneeling down by the little coffin that is what each one of us did.

I looked at Mr Wentworth carefully as we left. Everything about the man had made an impression on me; his quiet dignity and the underlying warmth of his humanity. He said goodbye as again he looked at each of us, watched us start to walk down the street, then he went inside and closed the door.

A few weeks later, Bernard and I were on our own and he told me that his father had had no time for religion, priests and ministers. No time for church or the singing of psalms and hymns. Something to do with the horrors of war and the way some religious people treats those who have different beliefs to them.
I found that interesting. My father had said similar things to me after being a soldier in the First World War. Bernard went on: ‘It helped Dad when you and the others came to see Simon and knelt by his coffin to pray. He reckoned that the prayers of innocent children would have reached the ears and heart of God before those spoken by priests or ministers of churches.’

I can’t escape the feeling today that Mr Wentworth was probably right. From time to time the remembrance of that event comes back to me and I know no what it was about him was significant for me: He was a man at peace with himself, despite his grief.

Dennis Crompton © 1997
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)