JOSIAH PYKE AND THE COUNSELLOR

The end of Josiah Pyke's tenth birthday and the promise of better things to come.

Josiah Pyke might have been newly arrived at being a ten year old, but he’d never actually had a nice room and comfortable bed that was entirely his own before. He’d had a room, true enough, at the Vicarage where the proper bedrooms were kept nicely made up in case unexpected visitors called and wanted to stay the night. The Reverend Julian Pyke (father of Josiah and really rotten egg) had a secret wish that the Bishop might call for a glass or three and be too under the weather to drive safely back to his own home comforts and beg to stay the night.

He and the Bishop had a few thoughts in common, when they weren’t actually praying.

Anyway, preparations for a non-existent possible future meant that Josiah had a box room at the top of the house as his room, and a cold, draughty space it was too. An elderly iron bed with an equally elderly lumpy mattress constituted his furniture, together with a dusty chest of drawers in which he kept his clothing. He had quite a lot of that because the church held regular jumble sales in which his mother had first pick and, because of all the work she and her husband put in, didn’t see the point of paying.

Now, though, he was offered the sweetest little bedroom under the sun … at least that’s what he thought of it. The cottage was small so the rooms were also small, but small can be beautiful if all you’ve had in the past has been ugly.

“I hope you’ll be comfortable in here, dear,” murmured Mildred Haystack, beaming a smile that was only slightly flavoured with gin. She had opened the bottle in the brown paper bag that Josiah had offered her and had poured herself the smallest drop in a glass. At least Josiah, who was used to watch his mother fill a tumbler, thought it was the smallest of drops.

“It’s beautiful,” he sighed.

“The bed’s newly made up and I’ll open the window a bit so that you get nice fresh air,” she said in a cuddly voice. “The one advantage of living in the sticks like I do is there’s no traffic to keep you awake at night or to force you to wake up early in the morning, which is very nice indeed. But tomorrow we’ll have to sort things out. Tomorrow we’ll have to have counsel and advice and do what we must do, or they’ll do things for us and we might not like them.”

He didn’t properly understand, so kept silent.

He was used to keeping silent. His views were only rarely asked for and when he did present them because they were demanded they were more often than not received in stony silence that preceded a blow across the back of his head.

“The thing is, Josiah,” said Mildred quietly, “what we’ve done isn’t exactly normal and might be called kidnapping by some people. Nasty people, of course, they’d have to be nasty people, but their views are often the loudest.”

He needed to know one thing. It was important to him, though he wasn’t absolutely sure what made it so important.

“Why?” he asked.

“Why?” she repeated, smiling a broad, homely smile. “Because I know how you’re treated at home, and to think he calls himself a man of God! If there is a God up there in the Heavens, and I’m not totally convinced that there is, but if there is then that good spirit wouldn’t like what your father does to you at all. He’s been reported, of course, I know several people who’ve reported him, but he’s the vicar and when they ask about things he recites a sermon at them. Or that’s what it sounds like. People only like sermons in church, don’t you think, not on the doorstep?”

Josiah thought she was possibly right.

“I’m going to be a vicar when I’m grown up, and when I am I’ll put everything right,” he said in a quiet voice.

“You are?” asked Mildred in a surprised voice. “Well, you’ll have to do well at school,” she told him. “Vicars go to University, I think, and they study difficult subjects and talk about all sorts of meaningless things together. So you’ll have to do well at school.”

“I get sick,” he told her, “and mum puts me in bed with her medicine.”

“I’ve heard about that medicine of hers,” muttered Mildred darkly. “It’s not good for man or beast, that’s what I’ve heard. Now before I go you’ll have to pretend your pants are pyjamas for tonight. We’ll see about getting you some proper ones tomorrow when we beard a variety of ogres in their dens!”

“Ogres?” he asked, alarmed.

“The men who might not want you to stay here. And your parents, of course, though I think I know the perfect way to keep them quiet. I might suggest or even insist that a doctor takes a close look at you and all those fading bruises you carry around with you. Your father won’t like it if I suggest that because everything he does might well spill out into the open, and even the Bishop and those big knobs will find out. But that’s enough for now. Quite enough. Tomorrow is another day and we’ll do what we have to do then. You just climb into that bed and get some sleep. We all need sleep, or our brains get fuzzy and we forget how to think!”

And she smiled at him, actually blew him a kiss from the doorway where she stood, and was gone.

“Goodnight,” he whispered, and snuggled back in the sort of bed he didn’t know existed anywhere on the world.

She said knobs and wasn’t struck down dead, he thought with a big grin.

Then he closed his eyes and wondered what was happening to him.

He’d eaten two apples. Two whole apples, sweet and juicy and oh, so red, and no thunderbolt from Heaven had sought him out and smashed him to Kingdom Come, bypassing the Hereafter his father was so looking forward to as it did so. And weren’t apples Satan’s fruit? Weren’t they the sweet and juicy temptation put there by the devil to suck a child into a sea of darkness for ever and ever, amen?

And before then he’d gone for a walk because the Vicarage was locked. Dad was with his mother’s group and mum was cleaning the church aisle with a toothbrush because she’d displeased dad by not wearing enough. At least that’s what he thought had been happening. So he’d gone for a walk, only a little walk because he was ill, down a narrow road he’d never explored before, and suddenly his whole world had changed … and here he was. In a stranger’s house. And about to see more strangers about his future.

There was one place he didn’t want to return to and that was the Vicarage and the beatings he received from a man who was a sworn servant of the Almighty, beatings that he didn’t understand for sins he hadn’t even suspected existed but must be real because that’s what the pain said.

So the old woman (he still didn’t quite understand that fifty-something wasn’t actually old) was going to seek advice. She was going to take him to see a counsellor. Not a councillor from the council but a counsellor from he didn’t know where. Someone who was going to advise them what to do. And it might involve a doctor looking at him, poking at his body, measuring his height and weight, even maybe testing his blood for poisons.

He might have poisonous blood. That might be why he was such a sinner.

And when that was done he might actually come and live here, in this cottage in the quiet backwoods of Henstooth, a fair walk from the hated church, the shop and everywhere that he despised.

And he knew that was probably very likely because he knew one or two things about the way things had been before today had dawned and he was ten, things that would interest the strangers very much indeed.

© Peter Rogerson 08.03.18

Reviews

[Great Aunt Astri]

I like the way you tell this story and give the young boy's perspective. I am curious to know who this Mildred is and who the counsellors will be. I have a sneaky feeling there might be some intrigue to come. I'll have to read the next chapter.

[Peter Rogerson]

Like you, I'd love to read the next chapter, which I'll do later today when I've written it! All I know is that Josiah is going to end up a clergyman in his adult years, and as opposite to his father as it's possible to be. There: I've let the cat out of the bag!

[Great Aunt Astri]

When you've written it! You have got me laughing! Sounds a very good plan, but I do hope there is a lot of intrigue and skulduggery, before the ending is revealed!!!!!

[Peter Rogerson]

Who knows? The idea is for me to flesh out a character who popped up in the odd little piece a few years ago. I want to examine his motivations later in life, find out how his early years influenced the odd man that he became. It's the way I like to work, and at my age I reckon it doesn't really matter as ,long as the whole thing makes some sort of sense.

[Great Aunt Astri]

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