He Must Have Been English

When the   Baptist Governor of Texas a man brought up on the King James version was asked if given changing demographics there was a case for teaching schools in Spanish ,he replied. “English was good enough for Jesus Christ and so its good enough for Texas school kids.”

So it was  on a sunlit day last week that I got on the bus from Abergavenny to Brecon. The road mainly following the River Usk ,then red in tooth and claw from the clay and  roaring like a captured beast. The Beacons smartly etched and tailored followed us all the way to the charming Georgian  county capital.

Up to the Cathedral for Valentine Bennett’s  Memorial Service. It would have been his 90th birthday, a further reminder that that is the exact year to make your excuses and leave. A beautiful  small cathedral with the blood of its most famous regiment the South Wales Borderers(Rorkes Rift) splashed all over its walls.

Val, whose son and I are close friends, he god father to my daughter me ,to his , had one of those lives and personalities which make you cheer and weep. Well born, a good school, always artistically talented, he flew in the Fleet Air Arm in the War. His aircraft carrier suffering kamikaze attacks in the final assault on Japan.

After the war a successful career in the aircraft industry until aged fifty tired of the politics he started his own  business. His range of hand painted model ducks are world famous and he ran a thriving cottage industry for forty years.  His pictures of nature , not least ducks  are collectors items world wide.As well a stalwart of the local community, an upright man in every sense,a happy marriage and a fine  and various family. It doesn’t get  much better.

So it is hardly surprising that the cathedral  had around two hundred well wishers. A far cry from the last one I went to at Lambeth Crematorium where  nine of us huddled together for warmth. Generations of  Bennetts read poems and  sang -the prep school boys treble bringing the house down.

A good choir threatens the most hardened atheism with “make me the channel of your peace.”. We sing the Fleet Sir  Arm version of for those in peril ,”O let our cry come unto thee For those who fly 0’er land and sea”. Who cannot have  second thoughts about there being something beyond the skies when they sing the 23rd psalm “in pastures green;he leadest me The quiet waters by.” Then  its  I vow to me my country  and finishing with the hymn we sang as school leavers “his  first avowed intent To be a pilgrim” Oh God,maybe you are there.

The eulogy given by a man with a cv as  long as modern British history mentioned Val’s faith. It ended with the last visit. And as the friend left he turned round and saw terminally ill  Val talking to God and thanking him. Thankfully  we were British, otherwise the floor of that ancient  church would have been washed clean with tears  We held on. All the while the sun was streaming through those high windows. As it should.