CONSTANCE AND THE PRIEST

The vicar of the church Constance attends has a serious problem...

Twice a week Constance Bingley had part-time assistance at her desk in Brumpton Public Library. Janet Goody, a mother of three, managed to find Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings free enough to permit her a part time job, and very part time this one was.

Saturday mornings tended to be hectic and both women were often, to use their own parlance, rushed off their feet though it was hard to see just how they were rushed and what their feet had to do with anything. This was a library and excessive use of the feet was prohibited, probably by some archaic bye-law or other.

But Wednesday afternoons were delightful. It was during Wednesday afternoons that Constance was able to catch up on the really important local news because Janet was, par excellence, a purveyor of all things local and juicy.

It was one particular Wednesday afternoon and Janet was recounting the unfortunate incident in which a woman Constance had never heard of did something really offensive to a woman Constance had never met when she stopped mid-sentence (much to Constance’s relief) and gasped, “The vicar’s crying!”

“That’s odd,” murmured Constance, “he doesn’t cry very often.”

“I’ve never seen him cry at all,” affirmed Janet, “I wonder what on Earth can be wrong? Has his Jesus died or something?”

“It’s not Easter for months,” Constance advised her, and then after a moment’s thought, “I think I’ll ask him if he’s all right.”

“He clearly isn’t,” muttered Janet, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man in a dog-collar cry before. It doesn’t seem natural, somehow. It’s as bad as catching an Undertaker giggling.”

“I dared say it isn’t natural,” averred Constance, “you wait here in case we get a rush.”

And she made her way towards the weeping priest, walking by a circuitous route as if she had a dozen other things to do, none of which had anything to do with priests or tears.

He was sitting at a small table set out to accommodate customers who wanted to consult the reference library and he had a thickish tome in front of him, open at a page covered in tiny print.

“Is something wrong, reverend?” she asked when she was only two feet away and behind him, and to do him credit he seemed to jerk out of his seat with a kind of unpremeditated shock. She liked that because it meant that her own subterfuge had been sufficiently clandestine for him to be unaware of her proximity.

He looked up. Yes, his face was moist and his eyes were remarkably red.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to bring my grief here.”

“That’s perfectly all right,” she said, “this is a library, and if a vicar can’t take his sorrows into a library, where can he take them?”

“I suppose...” he tried to reply, but only succeeded with the two words.

“Maybe I can help,” she suggested. “It has often been said that a problem shared is a problem halved...”

“It’s simple, really,” he sighed, “and I don’t care who knows, not now, not so close to the end.”

“Then you’d be better getting it off your chest,” she said in a matronly voice, and she sat down opposite him in the only other chair at that table. Not many people need a reference library in the age of Wikipedia.

“I’ve lost my faith,” he almost sobbed, “I’ve gone and lost it and I’ll never find it again.”

She was appalled when he said that because she knew him to be a very faithful man, often angrily so. It was his church that she visited most Sunday mornings (when she wasn’t disporting herself on the park where she hoped she might one day be noticed by Mr Cavendish, a sprightly if somewhat elderly gentleman who she had once noticed strolling past the tennis courts with his trouser flies undone. It had been completely inoffensive and she hadn’t caught a glimpse of anything she shouldn’t, but nonetheless she lived on in the hope that one day it would happen again and she might be more fortunate, so to speak. But most Sundays she spent being purified by the Reverend Pike, a man who went to great lengths, and that included great shouting, to convince her and the rest of his tiny congregation that faith could move mountains.

And here he was saying he had lost his! Permanently.

“How on Earth has such a terrible thing happened?” she asked, shocked.

“I had a pain,” he confessed, “a really nasty pain. It came on me bit by bit. I still have it, and I hate it. It’s in my trouser region, to be frank with you, and I went to the doctor for medicine and he told me I needed to be tested for cancer. So reluctantly I had the tests and added a huge wedge of prayer to the mix, to make things absolutely sure, you understand, but when I returned to get the results of the tests I was told I would have to have my … I hate to mention the things, they’re nothing to do with genteel ladies like yourself … but they exist and I better had, so here goes, … both my testes off. Both of them.”

“Oh dear,” murmured Constance, who only had the vaguest idea what testes might be.

“He wanted to make me an appointment at hospital for the surgeon to remove them. He even said they might be able to replace them with artificial ones made of rubber or some such stuff, for cosmetic purposes, he said. I was shocked and barely understood the cosmetic bit.”

“It might be beneficial,” she said, not understanding it either. “on a psychological level.”

“Anyway, I told him no, I didn’t need a surgeon’s knife and he mentioned a course of tablets that might do the job in the short term if I’d prefer that, but I said no, not pills and potions either. I’m a man of God, I said, and a man of God has faith. A huge amount of faith, and I will pray. I will utter such beautiful prayers that my Lord will hear me and understand that I don’t consider myself ready to die just yet, and he will replenish my … my testes … with goodness, and all will be well.”

“You are so brave,” Constance told him, amazed that he was being so forthright to one of his lesser-known parishioners.

“So I went away, and set about praying. It can be so cathartic, communicating with the Almighty, you know, and as the words poured out of me I could almost feel my testes being repaired by divine fingers, or rather, being repaired by God. I even added a bit to last Sunday’s sermon on the subject of prayer overcoming all obstacles.”

“When I was a small girl I prayed that my Barbie would come alive and talk to me,” sighed Constance, “I prayed very, very hard and when the morning came and Barbie was still made of plastic I almost lost my small-girl faith. So I know what you’re saying.”

“My Lord would never give life to a toy!” snorted the Reverend Pike, “but you must have been a sweet child,” he added, aware that he may have sounded a tad abrasive.

“I know he wouldn’t now,” sighed Constance.

“Anyway, I kept an appointment with the doctor at hospital after three months and fully expected to be told that the Lord had repaired my you-know-whats and all was well with my flesh,” wept the Reverend Pike, “but that wasn’t what happened. I was told that my life would be savagely limited because the cancer in my testes was spreading! It was going to places it had no right to go and that I was, in fact dying already. And soon, he said, within months, he explained rather fiercely, so it would be wise of me to sort my affairs out. And when I suggested he might be wrong in his diagnosis and prognosis he poo-pooed me and told me that if prayer helped a sick man get better it was because he was going to get better anyway and I wasn’t. And that if I expected medical intervention then I shouldn’t have left it too late.”

“Oh dear,” murmured Constance, out of her depth.

“So I’ve lost my faith,” wept the Reverend Josiah Pike, “and it’s gone for good. I thought I’d come here and see if the great saints and sages of the past have any words of comfort or even encouragement, but they don’t, not in this book...” he tapped the tome in front of him … “and not anywhere.”

“What a shame,” murmured Constance, “excuse me, I must...”

And in order to escape further pity for a dying priest she returned to the counter behind which she spent almost all of her working life and looked at Janet, adopting the most horrified expression she could manage.

“He’s only gone and lost his faith,” she said.

© Peter Rogerson 30.12.17