Witness account · 3 min read · Set in Ostmark ·
The Appointments in My Own Hand
A visiting chaplain discovers visits already entered in his round book for parishioners he has not yet been sent to.
- reliability: uncorroborated
- witness: "Gerard Fewkes, visiting chaplain"
My visit book is a marbled day-book with a ruled twin column, and I have kept it for the Ostmark rounds for nine years without the least complaint from anyone, including myself. The left column I write in advance — ward, name, hour — and the right column I fill in afterwards, with what passed, or that nothing passed, which is often the truer entry.
The book lives in the chaplaincy cupboard at the Ostmark annexe, and the ward clerk there, Miss Onslow, keeps a second list at the desk, so between us the rounds have always squared. On the Tuesday after the second of November I took the book out to prepare the Friday round and found three entries I had not written on any Tuesday. The dates were ahead of me. The hand was mine.
I want to be exact about the hand, because a chaplain's hand is no better than anyone else's and mine slopes uncommonly when I hurry. The entries did not slope. They sat the way my entries sit when I am unhurried and sure of the sentence, the f's docked the way I dock them, and the ink was the violet of my own pen. Ward, name, hour: Fline Ward, E. Dedman, half past two; the mix ward, W. Skerry, quarter to four; and a third for the Tuesday following, which I confess I did not read twice.
I had met neither parishioner. I asked at the desk and Miss Onslow checked her admission book and found no such names posted, and we agreed, pleasantly enough, that some evening porter must have had the book out — though the cupboard key hangs in my stole drawer, and the lock of the cupboard shows no wear that any evening could account for.
I went on the Friday at my appointed hours and made my round, and the right column took down what passed, and it was a good round. When the book went to the desk for its countersign, Miss Onslow read the right column back to me against the date I had found written ahead, and there was an entry in it. Not mine. The desk copy holds that the chaplain visited the mix ward at quarter to four on the appointed date, visit made, time initialled, in the hand of whoever keeps times at Ostmark. I was at the Deanery that afternoon, and I can bring two witnesses for the Deanery, though I have decided against bringing them, for a chaplain is not in the business of proving where prayer was not.
The book has since given me one further entry, for a Tuesday in Advent, in my own unblemished hand. Miss Onslow has not seen that one, because I carry the book home now and back again in my coat, which I am aware is against the keeping of records and will answer for at the visitation.
Others have looked since. Mr. Pyke the verger held the pages to the window light for a full minute, and the verdict was kindly and what I prepared myself for: ink wanders, books open on their own, a man who visits the sick all day begins to write like the ward. Nothing has been contradicted. Nothing has been confirmed either, and no one who has held the book has offered to hold it through the Friday after Advent.
That leaves the question I have not put to anyone, least of all the Bishop's office: whether a chaplain may be excused an appointment made in his own hand — or whether, when that Tuesday comes, I will find the visit already entered in the desk copy, the time initialled, and will have sat the whole of an hour with somebody whose name I wrote Advent ago and can no longer bring myself to read.