6 THE SURGEON

A funeral and a heart attack

The funeral of Mildred O’Donnelly at the Crematorium had done the dear departed a kind of justice. It was exactly the sort of funeral she would have chosen for herself, and the secular celebrant had performed her task with huge sympathetic skill. No Priest would have represented the spirit of the deceased with such honest clarity. After all, Mildred had believed in life rather than in gods of any shade of faith.

The funeral had been tucked in at the end of the day, and complaints had already been issued to apostolic authorities, though nobody expected anything to come from them. Like many another profession, the church was quite capable of closing ranks in the face of opposition.

“I’m glad I came,” murmured Constance, the Borough of Brumpton librarian, to Sophia. She had been unable to attend the debacle of the day before because she was at work and the council only permitted time off for such things as funerals if a close relative was involved. The friend of a friend in no way constituted a close relative, but the library closed early on Wednesdays anyway, so her time was her own.

“It was touching,” agreed Sophia, “and at such short notice. Do you fancy a drink?

“A quick one, then,” smiled Constance.

The Crab and Lobster was quiet as they found a seat out of the way of anybody else who might choose to swell its clientele, a certainty for a busy town pub even mid-week.

“I’m glad that’s over,” sighed Constance, “funerals are never pleasant affairs.”

“Mildred was a dear friend of mine,” sighed Sophia, “I’ve known her forever, and I suppose you could honestly say we were two sides of the one coin rather than two peas in a pod. She was outgoing, loved parties and the like, even went to the odd rave, believe it or not, whereas I tended to be a bit of a stick-in-the-mud. But we got on well.”

“Why did that priest cause so much trouble?” asked Constance, “it’s something I’ve never heard of and I’ve heard of quite a lot of stupidity in my time.”

“I don’t know. I put it down to the man being an idiot,” replied Sophia, “but he’s a Priest, which means he must have a decent amount of education in his background. I dared say he even went to university, and not everyone can do that.”

“There’s something so divisive about religion,” sighed Constance, “people have their own ideas about what life’s all about and if you start introducing an invisible man in the skies into your ideas about the scheme of things they’re bound to turn a bit, what shall I call them, c**k-eyed?”

“Mildred loved people,” sighed Sophia, “and when we were young she loved men. Quite a lot of decent, caring men. And I rather suspect that she was fond of the, you know, what, physical thing when it came to romance.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” averred Constance, “after all, it’s what you make your living from, writing about love, and I dared say more of your kind of books are borrowed from the library than any other, which means indirectly I make my living from it too.”

“I’m not a fifty shades sort of writer though,” objected Sophia, “my stories are more about feelings than doing stuff!”

“I know your formula,” laughed Constance, “it’s all to do with driving your characters apart, put seemingly insurmountable objects between them, and shed a tear when they overcome their difficulties and end up in each other’s arms!”

“And my new book’s going to have a priest in it,” smiled Sophia. “I take some of my inspiration from real life!”

“As the main character? As the lover who’s the wrong side of a gigantic chasm, just yearning to put his arms around the fragrant missy on the other side, and wander off with her into the sunset?”

“Something like that,” acknowledged Sophia, “though I hadn’t realised that I write to a formula!”

“It’s what it seems to me, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Loads of authors have a formula, you know.”

“I dared say they do. You know what, Constance, the Priest who wouldn’t bury Mildred is the same one who went into the library the other day asking for books on the good Samaritan. Remember, when I was there, listening in!”

“It looks as if he might have been researching how to be a better priest,” suggested Constance.

“Then he didn’t learn much, did he?” murmured Sophia. “because there’s one thing that a good Samaritan’s got to be, and that’s good, which is something he wasn’t.”

“Why don’t we beard him in his den?” asked Constance, “you know, turn up at his church and ask for guidance, and see what he’s got to offer?”

“Ah, that’s the point,” murmured Sophia, “I heard he’s in hospital. He had a heart attack in the street, and from what I’ve pieced together it might well have been me who caused it!”

“You?”

“Yes. Me. Apparently a woman went up to him when folk were streaming out of the theatre, and said something to him before stalking off, and he collapsed immediately afterwards. Well, I was there and I went up to him, told him briefly what I thought of him, and stalked off! I wanted to be among the first in the car park because you know what it can be like, and I didn’t look back!”

“Crikey!”

“So I wasn’t a very good Samaritan, was I?”

“Probably not. But on the other hand, you were justified,” murmured Constance.

oo0oo

“You’re a lucky man,” Doctor Simpson told Father Samuel Tinder, staring down at him and scowling.

“I suppose I am,” muttered the Priest, “But then, I suppose if I wasn’t lucky, as you put it, I might be in Heaven by now, and might be looking on that as lucky.”

“That very much depends on your attitude to death,” grinned the surgeon. “Me, I have every intention of feeding the daisies on my demise in the full and happy knowledge that my Afterlife will involve being visited by a family of bees and will at least do some good on the world.”

“You have no faith, doctor?” asked a shocked Samuel, “you don’t believe in God?”

“Father, you can believe in whatsoever you like, but I don’t have to,” replied the doctor, rather sternly, “I’ve seen enough to know that if there really was the sort of God you religious folk believe in then he’d have put a stop to a great deal of nonsense years ago! I have been a medic in a war zone and I can tell you one thing for certain: the lads I helped patch up and put back together again weren’t being watched over by any invisible guy. They were being tortured by other men, and if there was any kind of spirit in the skies he would have put a stop to it before it happened. Now you take it easy, Father, and donlt go overthinking about life and death. Your heart’s in no shape to take too much spiritual agitation. Give it a chance, though, let it heal and you might even outlive me!”

“I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful...” muttered Samuel Tinder, “it’s just that … I’m tired.”

“I’m not surprised. Look, Father, just get some of your strength back and we’ll discuss regimes that will help you in the future. Diet, exercise, all the things that go to keeping our hearts healthy and disease-free.”

The doctor wandered off to other beds and other diseased hearts, leaving Father Samuel Tinder to contemplate his words.

The man’s just got to be wrong about faith, he thought, of course he has! It’s not down to God if men go to war! He created men in the first place, and women of course, and in my book it’s the women who are behind all the wars. But that’s only to be expected. It was, after all, a woman who committed the original sin and they’re all tainted by that! And I know quite a lot of weak-willed men who’d do anything if a woman tells them to!

He closed his eyes and thought a little morbidly about the past, his present and his future. Maybe he should have died in the street outside the theatre. Maybe then he’d be face to face with his God and learn how to love.

And maybe even love for the very first time in a life that hadn’t known much in the way of love.

© Peter Rogerson 12.01.19