Everybody went. The sort of person who did not expect to attend mattins on a Sunday morning was not the sort of person invited to Snailwood As for guests who might need to know the times of worship at the nearest synagogue, they were as likely as those enquiring where they could assist at a druidical sacrifice. Under Zena’s rule anything became possible, from the out-and-out atheism of visitors such as Shaw, through the soggy credos of the modern young whose theology consisted of believing that Christianity had been a good notion until St Paul had made the mistake of thinking about it and thus ensured that churchgoing became rather a bore, to the devotional rigour of Father D’Arcy’s Catholic converts, who preferred to be accommodated with a chapel where the most elaborate ritual was attended by worshippers of the bluest blood Despite this, enough people from Snailwood, family and visitors, usually came to the parish church for three pews to be reserved for them.
