A story from the fictional parish of St Faithful’s, Havnot.

By the sixth Thursday, the thing had become undeniable. It was now a series. Not formally, of course. No one had produced an agenda, though Perry had come dangerously close. No minutes were taken, though Perry had also come dangerously close to that. No one called it a salon except Kevin, and he only did that twice before Horse said that if the word “salon” appeared again in his front room he would start charging for scaffolding.

The first difficulty was, naturally, tea.

“You have not,” said Sandy, peering into the cupboard with a kind of exhausted fascination, “managed to forget it again.”

Horse, who was standing at the sink with a blender jug in one hand, said, “We did not forget it. We continue not to buy it.”

“That is worse,” said Lionel.

Kevin, who had clearly hoped the matter might pass unexamined, opened another cupboard and said, “There is something called Rooibos.”

“No,” said Abe at once.

“It is tea-adjacent,” said Kevin.

“It is grief in twig form,” said Lionel.

Tim, who had long since abandoned hope in this department, looked at Sandy. “Please tell me the Church has once again risen to the occasion.”

Sandy gave a small, satisfied smile and produced emergency teabags from her bag.

Horse watched this with admiration bordering on theological revision. “I’m beginning to think your whole doctrine of providence is just hidden in that handbag.”

“Quite a lot is hidden in this handbag,” said Sandy. “Some of it may indeed be providential.”

Thus fortified, they settled once more into the familiar arrangement. Tim on the sofa. Sandy on the arm of it. Lionel upright, this week holding a mug advertising a steam rally in Dorset, which he regarded as tolerable. Perry on the folding stool, notebook ready. Abe nearest the books. Kevin at the edge of the hearthrug on the three-legged milking stool. Horse against the mantelpiece, preserving his customary posture of principled semi-participation. Leslie, serene as ever, upon the flower-pot.

It was Perry who began.

“Well,” he said, with the dangerous brightness of a man who had thought about this in advance, “miracles.”

Horse closed his eyes briefly. “There goes the evening.”

Tim smiled. “Come now. It was your threat about putting the kettle off if anyone raised the dead before seven-thirty that really set the tone.”

“It was not a threat,” said Horse. “It was a boundary.”

Abe took a sip of tea. “All right, then. Let’s start plainly. What do believers think a miracle is? A suspension of the laws of nature? A divine intervention? A statistically unusual event with better publicity?”

“That,” said Kevin, “is very nearly three different questions.”

“Yes,” said Abe. “I know. It’s my gift.”

Lionel adjusted his grip on the steam rally mug. “The trouble with miracles is that Christians often speak as though the options were either crude supernaturalism or embarrassed silence. Neither is satisfactory.”

Sandy grinned. “That sounded exactly like you.”

“Good,” said Lionel.

Tim leaned forward. “Perhaps the first thing to say is that Christians have not historically meant just one thing by miracle. Sometimes they mean a remarkable event taken as a sign of divine action. Sometimes they mean a healing. Sometimes a biblical wonder story. Sometimes simply an encounter with grace so profound that the ordinary word fails.”

“Yes,” said Abe, “but that is part of the problem. The more sensible believers become, the more elastic the word gets. Before long, a miracle is either the feeding of the five thousand or finding your car keys.”

Perry glanced up. “Surely no one says that.”

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A story from the fictional parish of St Faithful’s, Havnot.

By the fifth Thursday, the gathering had acquired liturgical features, though no one would have admitted it. Tim and Sandy arrived together. Perry brought the folding stool. Leslie returned to the flower-pot with the calm of a man who had accepted suffering and emerged with improved seating theology. Lionel inspected the mugs before choosing one that merely said *Cornwall* and therefore counted as neutral territory. Abe came in with the expression of a man who had promised himself he would continue until the enterprise finally became silly. Kevin had placed his three-legged milking stool by the hearthrug before anyone arrived, which was really quite close to setting out chairs in a church hall. Horse remained by the mantelpiece, preserving the illusion that this was all happening around him rather than because of him.

The first difficulty was tea.

It was not that they had none. It was that they had, through some administrative lapse not unlike original sin, acquired only herbal tea.

Sandy opened the cupboard, stared at the contents, and then looked back at Kevin with the air of a woman trying not to overreact in a Christian manner.

“Peppermint,” she said.

“Yes,” said Kevin.

“Chamomile.”

“Yes.”

“And something called Night Orchard Calm.”

Horse, who was rinsing out the blender, said, “That one tastes of apology.”

“Do you have,” said Lionel, very carefully, “any tea that has at any point met a leaf and a sense of duty?”

Kevin spread his hands. “Apparently not.”

Abe peered over Sandy’s shoulder. “This is wonderful. The believers have come to discuss prayer and have been offered scented disappointment.”

“It is not disappointment,” said Kevin. “It is infusion.”

“It is horticultural grief,” said Lionel.

Tim, who had seen enough Thursdays now to know the shape of things, said, “Sandy, tell me you’ve still got emergency supplies.”

Sandy patted her bag. “I’m not saying I anticipated failure. I’m saying I travel with a realistic doctrine of man.”

“Curates,” said Horse, “are terrifying.”

Within minutes the tea crisis had been redeemed. Mugs were distributed. A packet of digestives appeared. Perry placed his notebook on his knee. Abe took the chair nearest the books. Kevin perched on his milking stool like a man about to moderate either a philosophy seminar or a village arbitration. Tim was on the sofa. Sandy had once again colonised the arm of it. Lionel sat upright with Cornwall. Leslie was serene on the flower-pot. Horse leaned against the mantelpiece, still giving the impression that indoor furniture was a concession to weather rather than principle.

Kevin looked around the room.

“Well,” he said, “Abe suggested prayer.”

“I did,” said Abe, “because after suffering it seemed only fair to proceed directly to talking to no one.”

“That,” said Tim, “is one possible definition.”

“Not mine,” said Leslie gently.

“No,” said Abe. “Yours probably has more hope in it.”

Horse took a sip of tea. “I don’t mind prayer in principle. What I object to is public prayer, where someone starts with famine and ends, four and a half minutes later, in the car park.”

“That,” said Lionel, “is because much public prayer is criminally under-edited.”

Sandy laughed. “Dobbs would want it noted that some intercessions have all the spiritual value of a shopping list read under emotional pressure.”

“Quite,” said Tim. “But that may not be the same as prayer itself.”

Kevin folded his hands. “All right then. Let us begin with the obvious sceptical question. What do believers think they are doing when they pray? Are they informing an omniscient God of facts He had somehow missed? Are they trying to change the divine mind? Are they comforting themselves with a spiritual version of talking through a problem?”

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A story from the fictional parish of St Faithful’s, Havnot.

By the fourth week, the gathering had acquired the unmistakable air of something that had not meant to become regular and now plainly was. Perry arrived with the folding stool without comment, which was in its way a declaration of principle. Leslie went straight to the flower-pot as a man returning to his pew. Lionel, having once suffered the ferret mug, now inspected the kitchen shelf on arrival and selected one for himself with the fastidious caution of a bomb disposal expert. Tim and Sandy came in with the easy familiarity of those who had begun to regard the whole thing as a kind of unofficial Thursday office, except with worse seating and better theology.

The first difficulty was, once again, tea.

“You still haven’t bought any,” said Sandy, looking into the cupboard.

“We have ingredients,” said Kevin defensively.

“For what?” said Abe, arriving behind her. “Regret?”

Horse was rinsing something green out of the blender. “We don’t live like normal people.”

“No,” said Lionel, hanging up his coat. “That much has become painfully plain.”

Kevin held up a packet from the back of a shelf. “There is peppermint.”

There was a silence in which even the house seemed embarrassed.

“That,” said Tim, “is not tea. That is blasphemy.”

In the end, as before, salvation came in the form of Sandy’s emergency teabags, produced this time with no ceremony at all, like a field nurse unpacking standard equipment in a war zone.

“I’ve stopped expecting growth in this area,” she said.

“Faithless,” said Kevin.

“Experienced,” said Sandy.

Soon they were settled again among the books, tools, papers and domestic improvisations of Kevin and Horse’s front room. Tim on the sofa. Sandy on the arm. Lionel upright, having secured a plain mug and therefore a moral advantage. Perry on the folding stool, already poised to note something. Abe nearest the books. Kevin on the three-legged milking stool by the hearthrug. Horse leaning against the mantelpiece in his usual manner, like a man who had agreed to civilisation only up to a point. Leslie serene upon the flower-pot.

It was Kevin who opened the evening.

“Well,” he said, “last week Abe rather cheerfully threw a grenade into the room and suggested suffering.”

“I suggested it,” said Abe, “because it is usually the point at which religious confidence either deepens or evaporates.”

“Marvellous,” said Horse. “I was hoping for something light.”

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A story from the fictional parish of St Faithful’s, Havnot.

By the following Thursday, the house had settled back into its natural state, which is to say that Kevin’s books had resumed their slow campaign to occupy every available horizontal surface, while Horse’s tools and horticultural contraband had spread themselves with quiet confidence across the rest. The folding stool had returned, Perry having apparently decided that a man could not rely indefinitely on providence where seating was concerned. Leslie’s flower-pot throne was also back, now with a cushion that suggested someone, perhaps against all reason, had begun to think of it as permanent.

The first difficulty, once again, was tea.

“You did buy some this week?” said Sandy, pausing in the kitchen doorway with the expression of a woman who had seen enough to know better than to hope.

Kevin looked at Horse.

Horse looked at Kevin.

“No,” said Abe, from behind them. “Excellent. Continuity.”

“We don’t really drink tea,” said Horse. “We drink smoothies.”

“Smoothies,” repeated Lionel, removing his coat as though the word itself had left a residue.

“Yes,” said Horse. “Healthy ones.”

Kevin opened a cupboard. “There is oat milk, almond milk, and something green in a bottle which I no longer fully trust.”

“Any actual tea?” said Tim.

“No,” said Kevin.

“Coffee?”

Horse considered. “In a philosophical sense, perhaps.”

Sandy closed her eyes briefly. “You two are hosting a series called *Believers and Sceptics*. The least you could do is provide a hot drink capable of uniting the nation.”

“It’s a domestic blind spot,” said Kevin.

“It’s a scandal,” said Lionel.

In the end, rescue arrived from the usual quarter. Sandy, with the air of a woman who had come prepared for flood, famine, and liturgical confusion, produced emergency teabags from her handbag.

Horse looked at her with something close to reverence. “Do you carry those everywhere?”

“I’m a curate,” said Sandy. “And I know you.”

Within a few minutes they were settled again with mugs of assorted character and quality, the room looking just as it had last week: half salon, half jumble sale, with the general atmosphere of an intelligent ambush. Tim was on the sofa. Sandy had annexed the arm of it. Lionel was sitting upright with a mug that this week declared him to be *Bournemouth’s Favourite Lorry Enthusiast*, which he regarded as a form of persecution. Perry had his folding stool and a notebook. Abe was nearest the books. Kevin was back on the three-legged milking stool at the edge of the hearthrug. Horse leaned against the mantelpiece as though furniture were a commitment he was not yet prepared to make. Leslie remained serenely upon the flower-pot, like a man at peace with both creation and absurdity.

Kevin looked round the room. “Well then. Since Horse rashly suggested it at the end of last week, perhaps we ought to ask what people actually mean when they say ‘God’.”

“That,” said Tim, “is either an excellent question or the end of western civilisation.”

“Possibly both,” said Abe.

There was a murmur of agreement.

Kevin folded his hands. “It seems to me that a great many arguments about God are really arguments about entirely different things, because people use the same word and mean wildly different realities. One person means an old man in the sky. One means the source of being itself. One means a kind of cosmic magistrate with anger issues. One means love. One means moral order. One means a childhood memory with candles.”

“Quite,” said Lionel. “And then all parties congratulate themselves for having refuted what no one present was actually saying.”

Abe nodded. “That’s fair. I’ve heard atheists reject a God I don’t believe in either.”

This pleased Tim visibly. “That is a very good line.”

“Don’t get excited,” said Abe. “I can still spoil your evening.”

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A story from the fictional parish of St Faithful’s, Havnot.

There are some houses which look as though they have been arranged for human habitation, and some which look as though they have evolved over time by means not yet fully understood by science. The home of Kevin Keen and Horace “Horse” Palmer belonged very firmly to the second category.

It was not dirty. Kevin would have objected strongly to that suggestion. Nor was it exactly untidy, if by untidy one means abandoned to pure lawlessness. It was simply that the house appeared to be in permanent negotiation between two different visions of civilisation. Kevin’s books were everywhere, though rarely in shelves when they might perfectly well have been. They rose in thoughtful piles from floor level: philosophy, theology, history, teaching manuals, half-marked exercise books, and essays with stern comments in the margins. Horse’s contribution, meanwhile, gave the place the air of a shed that had received a liberal education. There were tools on the sideboard, twine on the mantelpiece, seed trays in the porch, a sack of compost near the back door, and something involving copper piping in the umbrella stand that no one was able to identify with confidence.

“It looks,” said Kevin, standing in the middle of the sitting room with a tea towel in one hand, “perfectly all right.”

Horse, who was trying to move three plant pots off a chair without spilling a box of screws into the coal scuttle, gave him a long look.

“It looks,” he said, “like an argument between B&Q and a second-hand bookshop.”

Kevin ignored this, because he had heard it before and privately suspected it was accurate.

The first difficulty was cups.

They had cups, certainly. They had rather a lot of cups. What they did not have was seven or eight cups of the same sort, unless one wished to serve half the parish in a set of chipped mugs advertising long-defunct garden centres. Kevin had assembled them on the table in the kitchen and was looking at them as though consistency might yet emerge if he concentrated hard enough.

“We cannot offer Lionel tea in a mug that says WORLD’S BEST FERRET DADDY.”

“Why not?” said Horse. “It may improve him.”

“It will not improve me,” said Lionel, from the hallway, having let himself in with the mild inevitability of a man who treated invitation as a detail. He stepped into the kitchen, surveyed the mugs, and picked up the ferret one between finger and thumb. “Though I admit it has a certain candour.”

“You’re early,” said Kevin.

“I am punctual,” said Lionel.

“No,” said Horse. “You’re early. Punctual arrives on time and doesn’t inspect the crockery.”

By now the others were beginning to appear in uneven sequence. Tim and Sandy came together, Sandy carrying a packet of digestives in triumph like a peace offering. Abe arrived with the look of a man who had promised himself he would come once and reserve the right to regret it later. Leslie arrived in a coat with many pockets and immediately apologised for being late, though he was not. Perry came carrying a folding stool from his own house “in case seating proved inconsistent”, which it had.

“There are chairs,” said Kevin.

“There are,” said Horse, “but several of them currently have lives of their own.”

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There are certain subjects which, once introduced in The Little John, guarantee a more serious evening than anyone had intended. Cricket. Parish finances. Chips. And, every so often, religion.

It began on a Thursday, at that comfortable point in the evening when people had stopped pretending they were only popping in for one. Around the long table sat Tim, Sandy, Leslie, Perry, Kevin, and Horse, who looked as though he had been there since the Reformation. Abe arrived a little later, nodded to the room in a way that promised nothing, and collected his pint. Lionel came in last, with the expression of a man who had only entered because the alternatives had proved worse.

“I am only here for one,” he announced.

“No one asked,” said Horse.

For a while the talk was harmless enough: hymn numbers, noticeboards, village absurdities. Then Leslie, who had clearly half-remembered something from an article and felt obliged to share it, said, “I was reading Richard Dawkins earlier.”

That changed the air at once.

There was a pause. Then Leslie pulled a copy of The God Delusion out of his rucksack with finger and thumb. “He was making the usual point that religion survives by discouraging clear thought.”

Naturally, everyone turned to Abe.

Abe, who had only just lifted his pint, stopped and said, “Oh no. Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” said Tim.

“That thing where everyone looks at the atheist as if I’ve brought the official reply.”

Perry frowned. “You are an atheist.”

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