Saving sinners
Jeremy Clarke
There were three of us sitting around 1 the kitchen table drinking coffee: me, my boy, and an old friend of my mother called Edna. Edna is one of those bornagain Christians who is so full of the Lord that she can't stop talking about Him. I'm not sure why, but when she talks about Him to me I feel uncomfortable. Maybe it's because I used to be a born-again Christian myself and don't like to be reminded of it. One of the New Testament writers speaks about the Cross being an 'offence' to those who have closed their hearts to Him. It's very easy to forgive Edna for dragging Christ into every conversation, though, because underneath she's an extraordinarily, almost pathologically humble woman. 'I would talk about other things if I could, Jeremy,' she says apologetically. 'But I'm very stupid and don't know about anything else.' Which is a very fair assessment. Edna has been on earth for nearly 80 years without really getting involved.
So we're sitting round the kitchen table with a mug of coffee each. Edna's knitting. My boy has his nose in this week's Auto Trader. So I get the paperback I've just bought out of my pocket and start reading. It's called Escape from the Kray Madness by Chris Lambrianou. 'Good book?' says Edna, feigning an interest in things temporal for a mad moment. 'What's it about?'
I don't know what it's about. I'm only on the first paragraph. So I read out to her the blurb on the back cover. Chris Lambrianou was an associate of the Kray twins, it says. He helped clear up the mess after Blond Carol's 'party' in Evering Road at which Reg Kray stabbed Jack 'the Hat' McVitie. Lambrianou was convicted, with the 1Crays, of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. In Maidstone prison he tried to kill himself. 'before an amazing vision transformed him fundamentally, prompting him to become a Christian'.
Edna is very excited about this. She's a true evangelical and loves nothing more than to hear about a sinner saved. And ,,he's a great believer in visions, too. Some of her friends have them all the time. So what did this Chris Lambruno actually see that changed him so utterly? she urgently wants to know. I leaf through the book hoping to quickly light on the page on which the vision is described. `Ah, here it is, Edna!' I say. 'It's the sight of Ronnie Kray in his underwear.' 'Isn't your Dad rotten to me,' she says to my boy.
I pass Escape from the Kray Madness across the table to Edna and she picks it up and starts to read. She's a cockney, so she's familiar with the Krays and all that. And, once she gets going on it, neither I nor my boy has ever seen anybody read a book with such obvious pleasure. She's sighing and chuckling and whispering 'Praise the Lord!' and 'Isn't God good!' to herself. And we sit there for another half an hour, Edna engrossed in my new paperback, my boy still with his nose in Auto Trader, and me looking out of the kitchen window at a sleek nuthatch upside down on the peanut holder.
Then Graham, another of my mother's friends, pops his head round the kitchen door. Graham is leading an 'Alpha' Christian meeting that my mother is hosting later in the afternoon. He's an elderly farmer and a lifelong member of the village chapel. I don't see him very often, but somehow Graham has got it into his head that I am as full of the Holy Spirit as he is, and nobody has taken the trouble, apparently, to disabuse him. He greets me with his usual 'Still doing the Lord's work, Jeremy?' 'Oh yes, Graham,' I say. 'Praise Him. And have you met Edna?' Graham takes her hand in both his and says, 'I can see the light of the Lord in your eyes, my dear. God bless you. But don't let me keep you from your book — may I?' And he stoops to read the title of the book in Edna's hand. 'AIL Escape from the Kray Madness. Not a book I am familiar with, unfortunately.'
'It's such a wonderful, uplifting story,' says Edna handing it to him. 'He went to prison for a murder he didn't commit and the Lord sent three angels to speak to him in his cell and he became a Christian.' 'Praise the Lord!' says Graham, and eagerly opens the book at random and starts to read aloud in his rich Devon accent from the page:
As I pulled up outside, the guy who had threatened me before ran out of the house, followed by about four others. He was wielding the same knife.
`You'd better use it this time,' I told him.
Tm ing going to,' he said.
'Then you'd better have some of this,' I said.
At which point Graham ceases to read, closes the book and places it gently on the kitchen table. And how are you, young man?' he says, turning to my boy.
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