There were no verses in the Prayer-Book Bible, only long grey slabs like tombstones. You kept on looking for the last tombstone. When you came to the one with the big black letters, THE KING OF THE JEWS, you knew that it would soon be over.
"'They clothed him with purple, and platted a crown of thorns and put it on his head….'" She read obediently: "'And when the sixth hour was come … and when the sixth hour was come there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice…. And Jesus cried with a loud voice … with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost.'"
Mamma was saying that the least you could do was to pay attention. But you couldn't pay attention every time. The first time it was beautiful and terrible; but after many times the beauty went and you were only frightened. When she tried to think about the crown of thorns she thought of the new hat Catty had bought for Easter Sunday and what Mr. Spall did when he ate the parsnips.
Through the barred windows of the basement she could hear Catty singing in the pantry:
"'I am so glad that Jesus loves me,
Jesus loves me,
Jesus loves me….'"
Catty was happy when she sang and danced round and round with the dish-cloth. And Jenny and Mr. Spall were happy when they talked about Jesus. But Mamma was not happy. She had had to read the Morning Prayer and the Psalms and the Lessons and the Litany to herself every morning; and by Thursday she was tired and cross.
Passion Week gave you an awful feeling.
Good Friday would be the worst. It was the real day that Jesus died. There would be the sixth hour and the ninth hour. Perhaps there would be a darkness.
But when Good Friday came you found a smoking hot-cross bun on everybody's plate at breakfast, tasting of spice and butter. And you went to Aldborough Hatch for Service. She thought: "If the darkness does come it won't be so bad to bear at Aldborough Hatch." She liked the new white-washed church with the clear windows, where you could stand on the hassock and look out at the green hill framed in the white arch. That was Chigwell.
"'There is a green hill far a-a-way
Without a city wall—'"