2 THE LIBRARY TICKET

A character of mine pays this story a visit ... Constance, librarian.

The library was quiet when the Priest, Father Samuel Tinder, walked in, nervously, apprehensively, because he rarely went anywhere that wasn’t strictly ecclesiastic if you discounted the Supermarket. But he really needed to check on something and didn’t want to buy a new book because, well, books were so expensive these days.

He had all manner of erudite publications at home on his well-burdened shelves in the Presbytery, most of them inherited froma chain of predecessors, but none of them covered the particular topic he wanted to explore. You see, he had been helped out of an awkward situation only yesterday, and by a woman.

He didn’t know very much about women but he knew enough to be aware the good Samaritans were always male. And since yesterday’s experience he’d delved in to some of the more obscure works that had been accumulated on the aforementioned well-burdened shelves, but had failed to find a single example of females in the old Testament who were anything like good Samaritans.

He had found references to witches and harlots. He knew that ever since the first woman, the evil Eve, had breathed her first breath there had been evil in the world along with Satanic interference in the ways of mankind. He had studied some of the cases in more recent yet still historic times, cases that involved witchcraft and the righteous destruction of proven witches and their familiar beasts, and had applauded each and every burning at each and every stake. Witches were evil, and women were witches.

But were there any good women? Truly good? He knew his own congregation consisted of more women than men, but they had been converted into true belief and were consequently saved, though he wasn’t quite sure what they had been saved for as the general impression he gathered from highly intellectual treatises was that Heaven was a male-only preserve within the Afterlife and he rather assumed that women by virtue of Eve’s wickedness went the other way, downwards.

Because, he believed, they most likely deserved it.

His own mother had been a woman. It was hard for him to believe such a thing until he remembered some of the times she’d taken a switch to his back for sinning when the last thing that had been on his mind was sin. But she seemed to have gained some sort of relief from beating him and since the pain had long since subsided and the scars faded he assumed the chastisements were all part of his Lord’s search for purity, even using a woman as a weapon against the ever-present Satan. He liked the sense that it made and created, of a cruel mother, a kind of saint.

But back to the library.

The person behind the enquiry desk was a woman. He paused, yards away from the desk, thinking. Was this one of the saved women, one of those whose conversion was complete, or was it a harlot who knew how to smile like an angel? That welcoming smile was sweet enough, but such things meant nothing when it came to Satanic trickery.

The Good Samaritan woman of yesterday had boasted a really pleasant smile and he wondered whether it had been pasted onto her lips in attempt at Demonic seduction. Then he knew that it probably was, and he shuddered at the notion that even without thinking about it he had been saved from the very worst of sins. The Good Lord was saving him, of that there could be no doubt.

“Can I help you?”

That was the woman behind the enquiries desk and she was looking directly at him through eyes that had most certainly been designed to add further corruption to a world filled with sin.

“I was wondering...” But what was he wondering? Or was wondering the right word? And should he mention such holy things as the Lord’s description of a good Samaritan to a modern woman with wickedness and deceit as her raison d’être?

“You were wondering?” The words came back to him with s gentle power, the sort they hadn’t possessed when they had left his lips.

Then he said it. He had to. He was obliged to by the directness of those female eyes.

“Books on the Good Samaritan,” he mumbled.

“Oh, Father, you need religion! We’ve got quite an interesting selection over there...” she pointed, “… and even a few in the Reference section over there...” she pointed somewhere else, “but I must warn you the reference books are to be consulted within the library and mustn’t be taken out...”

“Oh,” he said, and felt like running away. But common sense prevailed, and he walked, a shade too quickly for comfort, to the selection of religious books where he could shrivel behind a bookcase.

Oo0oo

It was then that Sophia Stone strolled in.

When she wasn’t at home with her laptop on her lap she went to the library, for inspiration, she told herself, but usually it was for a chat with Constance, the lady behind the desk.

They got on quite well. No, that was to reduce a mountain to a molehill: they got on very well, mostly because she wrote romantic fiction and Constance devoured it with an enthusiasm that inspired the writer to create a great deal more.

“Is that a Priest, Constance?” asked Sophia, indicating the back of Father Tinder as he disappeared behind the religious section.

The librarian nodded, and grinned. “Quite a nervous character,” she said, “at first I thought he was more likely to wet his pants than talk to me! And you’d think his sort did enough talking from the pulpit to be quite used to it.”

“It takes all sorts,” agreed Sophia.

“It most certainly does! He wanted to read about good Samaritans, and I couldn’t help thinking that in his line of work he’d know enough about old stories like that to not need any more.”

“Maybe it’s a variation on the theme that interested him,” suggested Sophia, “who can tell what goes on in religious heads? Not me, for certain, though I am thinking of incorporating one in my next novel.”

“A priest? And celibacy?” grinned Constance.

“It might prove interesting, though as you know I don’t have many bedroom scenes,” Sophia told her, “I go more for the emotional side of love. To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t know where to start writing something involving a big double bed!”

“I love your books, “ sighed Constance, “they quite often bring tears to my eyes when I imagine myself in the place of your heroines.”

“That’s what I mean. Emotional,” smiled Sophia, “but talking of Priests, I met one yesterday at the Supermarket and he was lost when it came to paying by card! I had to help him out and I could tell he’d like to have been anywhere but with a soppy old romance writer who was looking for inspiration!”

“Ah, but did you find any?” asked Constance, her eyes twinkling.

“Not really. My Priest had a sadness about him, as if all of life was a chore that he couldn’t quite come to terms with. There’s not a deal of inspiration in men like that.”

“Look: he’s coming back! Let’s see what he wants this time,” hissed the librarian, and Sophia sidled up to a polished table near the librarian’s desk as invisibly as she could, and sat at it, holding a book intently, as if she was reading it.

She wasn’t, because it was one of her own and she knew it only too well, but she did listen.

“What do I do?” asked the Priest.

“What do you want to do, sir?” asked Constance.

“This book. I’d like to take it home. Is that possible?” asked the Priest with a huge amount of nervousness.

“Have you got a ticket?” asked the librarian.

“What’s a ticket?” asked the Father.

“You haven’t got one?”

He shook his head and looked for all the world as if he was going to run away.

“I’ll issue you a temporary ticket and then you can take the book,” Constance told him, “it’s a plastic card, a bit like a bank card...”

“I have all sorts of problems with them!” smiled the Priest, doing his best to look and sound like Mr Average, and almost failing.

“Don’t we all,” sighed Constance, and she passed him a form to sign after she’d filled in his details for him. Then she stamped the book and passed it to him.

“You can keep it for two weeks, but if you want it for longer, just bring it in and renew it,” she said. “Next time you come we’ll give you your shiny new card!”

“Th-thank you...”

As we walked out, as quickly as he could without seeming to be in too much of a hurry, he noticed there was a woman sitting at the table near the desk, her shoulders shaking as if she was either laughing or crying.

He hoped she wasn’t crying. He wasn’t too keen on secular misery. In his eyes something as serious as misery should be preserved for the war against evil that raged, day in and day out, all about him.

© Peter Rogerson 08.01.19