52. THE CASE OF THE CONFUSED CLERIC

An ex-soldier is disturbed by memories from his war experiences.

“I’ve had enough of this weather,” growled Sherlock Holmes as rivulets of water trickled down the window panes in the first floor room at 221b Baker street.

“We all have, but it can’t be helped,” I told him. “There’s nothing anyone can do about it. The weather’s the weather and in the lap of the gods.”

“If you believe in such entities,” said Holmes with a grimace. “I overheard the Reverend Pyke in the drug store this morning when I got soaked to the skin fetching my tobacco, and he was telling everyone in a very loud voice that he intended to pray for a cessation of the rain the moment he got back to the vicarage. The Lord will listen to me, he said, and bend to my will, for I have lived thus far a good life and all men and my lovely wife know it.”

“The Reverend Pyke said that?” I asked, “the Reverend Josiah Pyke?”

“I believe that’s his name,” nodded Holmes, picking up his violin case and opening it gently. “Why? Do you know him?”

“I knew him,” I murmured, “in the Afghan war. He was the pastor responsible for the moral guidance of the soldiers, and to call him an innocent would be to misinterpret his attitude to the men he was supposed to be guiding,” I said. “I am not guessing or I wouldn’t be saying this, and it is no intended criticism of his nature, but he developed a fondness for one or two young men who were, in turn, offended by what they saw as unnatural attention.”

“I think I know where you’re going, Watson, and hope you’ve not misconstrued honest decency and called it by another name,” suggested Holmes. “For I would have thought that in the intimate closeness of men nursing a natural fear of death tomorrow or sooner than that it would be easy to misunderstand a Christian attempt to calm nerves and … you know what I mean.”

“There was one young man who resented the attention being shown to him whilst he was wounded and laid up,” I said, “a lad called Cawker. He decided that the reverend had gone too far, and I will not go into any details concerning what he told me that Pyke had suggested to him as I bound the stump of his leg, but it made my skin crawl, I can tell you. You know me, Holmes: I respect a man and his nature, I’m not one of those who would judge another in ignorance, but there must be limits...”

“So you suspect that the Reverend’s prayers for a cessation to the rain will have fallen onto deaf divine ears?” smiled Holmes. “You think that Pyke’s good Lord, if indeed he exists, would condemn the cleric for the nature that his birth and his god provided him with, and use that condemnation to punish the rest of us by permitting this foul weather to continue?”

“I am doubtful...” I began.

“About what? The morality of a misplaced sense of affection? Or the presence anywhere in the Universe of a Creator?”

I was about to reply, and that would have been a difficult thing to do because Holmes was particularly skilled at playing the devil’s advocate, when the door was knocked and Mrs Hudson, our landlady, put her head into the room.

“You have a visitor, Sherlock,” she said.

“Ah, Mrs Hudson,” nodded Holmes, “and who might it be?”

“It is a one-legged man,” she told him, “I said he could meet you downstairs, for it is no easy task for a man with a limb missing to climb these stairs, but he insisted.”

“Then let him enter,” said Holmes, “we cannot cause undue suffering to one who has been maimed in such a way.”

The door was flung open and a man walked in, leaning heavily on a crutch. He was smartly dressed in a suit whose trousers had been skilfully adapted to suit his unusual shape and he had a rugged countenance. And, in addition to that, he was familiar to me.

“Mr Cawker,” I said involuntarily.

He looked at me and smiled. “Doctor Watson, what a pleasure,” he said in well-modulated tones, then he turned to Holmes.

“Mr Holmes, I have come to see you because you were recommended to me by your brother Mycroft,” he said, “for after my return home from the wars with only one leg and the possibility that I would never again be able to be gainfully employed, and my army pension being insufficient to more than feed me, he offered me work in his government office. You see, I have some skills left to me, those that a man can perform sitting at a desk, and I am happy to do that.”

“Excellent,” I enthused, glad to see that since I had last seen him Cawker had recovered enough strength to make something of his life.

“Anyway, in the office where I sit day in and day out as clerk to Mr Holmes there is a young lady who, though performing a menial task involving a kettle and tea pot, I started taking a fancy to. She is bright and cheerful and she seemed to like me in much the same way as I like her. She is an angel, is my Angela, and very properly named by her parents when she was baptised! To cut a long story short she and I decided to wed, and I called on the vicar at the local church in order to make the proper arrangements.”

“And you met the Reverend Pyke again, I suppose?” I put in.

He looked at me, and nodded. “I was shocked when I saw who it was, and made a swift excuse and left the church intending to seek another. But Angela has her heart set on a service at Mr Pyke’s establishment, and I would do anything in my power to please her. But how can I accept the blessing of a man like that, a man who would have condemned me to hell fire and damnation when he was pastor to the forces who were fighting a bloody war on foreign soil?”

“So you asked Mycroft for his opinion?” said Holmes.

Cawker nodded. “If you don’t mind me saying, he’s an odd one, sir, is your brother,” he said frankly, “and he told me that I might get better advice from you.”

“What do you make of Reverend Pyke?” I asked him, “forgetting what you know about him, you know, the things you mentioned to me when I was tending to your injuries?”

“You remember, Doctor? Yes, I’m sure you must, for I was hurt by the emotions behind his attentions and didn’t in any way share them. But war is a dreadful thing and numbs one to the wrongs in the world, so to speak.”

“They’re only wrongs if imposed on unwilling souls,” I told him.

“And I was unwilling!”

“Of course you were,” I purred.

“But it was war… and I was young and green … and I let him kiss me!”

“The situation...” I murmured.

“Was alien! There was I, in an army bed, unable to do much for myself, and the Reverend Pyke was standing over me, telling me that God was love and that … and that… and that….”

“Say no more,” said Holmes with uncharacteristic gentility. “You seek advice?”

Cawker nodded. “I wasn’t exactly an unwilling victim,” he confessed, “I was confused, doctor. You had been obliged to remove my leg, which had gone gangrenous and I was depressed to the point of believing that my life was as good as over before it had properly begun. And I had, within me, feelings...”

“For the Reverend?” asked Holmes.

Cawker shook his head. “For anyone … anyone who would look at me!” he said, and tears formed in his eyes. “I was in a bad place… goodness knows how I’ve regretted it! Kissing another man… what was I thinking of?”

“As you said, you were in a bad place,” said Holmes. “I’ll tell you what: go to the church and the Reverend Pyke and tell him that you intend to wed in his church. Tell him that you have a lovely fiancé and that you have chosen his religious authority to be your guide...”

“But what if he…?”

“He won’t. But if he does, ask to see his wife and say you have things to confess to her. That will give him pause to think!”

“He’s married?” asked Cawker.

Holmes nodded. “And to a very remarkable woman,” he said, “one blessed with an understanding heart. But look, Watson, out of the window!”

I looked.

The sun had broken through the rain clouds and our windows were becoming dry in its warmth.

“Wonderful,” I said.

© Peter Rogerson 29.09.17 

Author's Note

This deals with a delicate subject and I hope that I have not gone awry in my attempt at being non--judgmental.